When the enterprise came to the alderaan system
by Leznupar
Summary: This story tells of the unlucky encounter between the enterprise-e and the second death star. It is the beginning of a story where the enterprise-e crew comes to the aid of the rebellion.
1. Introduction

They were too late. Having dropped out of warp almost an hour ago, they had been searching the region for m-class planets with both long and short range scanners. So far they had just found some floating rocks and not the typical signatures of carbon based life they where looking for.

Jean-Luc Picard was standing behind a console showing the energy signatures picked up by the long range scanners and he was disappointed. Since they received the strange distress call this morning he had had good hopes of finding the source of it and here they were, just looking at space debris and listening to background noise.

It was a coincidence that the enterprise-e had picked up the transmission at all. They were far out into unknown territory, exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy when they had picked up some chatter on their long wave low frequency radio receiver. A relic from an era of light speed communications, the receiver had not been of any practical use in over a century and it was only protocol that made Laforge include its data in the morning analysis for out of the ordinary patterns.

And there it was, a piece of chatter that sounded like background noise to the human ears was flagged by the computer as a "non naturally occurring wave pattern". After the computer was done with the fragment it sounded a lot like a human voice that was calling for help. The voice, which sounded female, gave the coordinates to a planet by the name of alderaan, in the alderaan system which was just in the next galaxy.

Apparently the planet had been under attack inspiring its inhabitants to call for help on all frequencies, even the ordinary radio frequencies. Their signal had survived its long trip through the relative void between two galaxies. Unfortunately it seemed the signals had been underway for several years before they reached the enterprise-e which, as it now seemed, had come too late to be of any assistance. The question bugging the captain most was: what had happened to the planet alderaan and its inhabitants?


	2. Chapter one: The discovery

Chapter 1

Jean-Luc was behind his desk, pondering his decisions. It had been his judgment call to make the jump to this galaxy and it hadn't paid off the way he had intended. They had been searching for new life and new civilizations for three months now and had found only one semi-sentient race and a planet supporting a small diversity of micro-organisms but without a trace of atmosphere. All the inspiring words spoken at starfleet academy when they had left space dock were beginning to wear off and morale was low among his crew consisting mainly of ensigns and cadets, eager to explore. When his crew discovered the strange radio transmission, Jean-Luc had jumped at the chance to explore a new galaxy and had spared no expenses to get them there. Now he needed to face his senior staff and explain the new situation, he wasn't looking forward to it.

The staff was gathered in the staff room and they were looking expectantly at their captain, waiting for an explanation for the past events.

"It seems", the captain started, "we have made a wrong call coming here" "That jump has cost us more antimatter that we anticipated and as a result we now have barely enough to return to our own galaxy" "We'll be making the jump back as soon as the ship is ready"

Geordi was not about to give up the search so easily. "Sir, there used to be a planet here, probably the home world of a sentient species, and now it's gone somehow. Isn't that enough reason to investigate?"

"This discovery sure stirred up peoples imaginations" Deana added. "After all these months now people finally have something to work for"

The captain had thought of this. "I wish we could keep on looking and we would if we had more resources, however if we don't make the return jump soon, we won't be ablte to make it at all" He said, with an air of finality.

"Forgive the breach of protocol, sir, but I think we may have found something" came a voice over the intercom


End file.
